


This Is The End

by Heavenlea6292



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Croatoan/Endverse, Croatoan, Dark fic, Minor Lisa Braeden/Dean Winchester, Multi, POV First Person, Sam's Journal, Sam's POV, Suicidal Thoughts, female oc - Freeform, minor Sam Winchester/Female OC
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-21
Updated: 2014-09-03
Packaged: 2018-02-14 02:48:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2175288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heavenlea6292/pseuds/Heavenlea6292
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam has always kept a journal, but after the Croatoan Virus takes the world by storm, writing becomes his solace in a world corrupted by death and chaos.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Day The World Went Away

_For they are spirits of demons, performing signs, which go out to the kings of the whole world, to gather them together for the war of the great day of God, the Almighty._ **Revelations, 16:14**

* * *

The world as we knew it has ended, and it has ended on August 19th, 2009.

Well, not exactly. If America was the world, then yes, life as we knew it is over. The Croatoan virus spreads like wildfire. Travel restrictions, checkpoints; the whole of the United States is at war with an invisible enemy, one they can’t fight, and couldn’t understand. After all, how could they? Hunters have been cleaning away the Supernatural from the public eye since the turn of the 19th century; and they thought they were doing the right thing. We all thought we were doing the right thing. Someone had to keep the civilians safe. Someone had to chase the monsters out from under the bed. I wouldn’t say we were more than happy to do it- but just as every economy needs a burger flipper and a janitor, so too does every populated area need a hunter.

At first, the estimations were that one in every four people was infected. They got it backwards.  
  
Three weeks earlier, Dean had agreed to let us hunt together again, to get rid of Lucifer. Apparently, we hadn’t agreed soon enough.  
  
We sat in Bobby’s house, staring at the images on the television that day, the day before it all really went to hell. Mystery virus. CDC can’t find a cure. No one knows what to do. No signs, no symptoms until the infected start rampaging. Some people are calling it zombies. Some people are calling it Revelations. All anyone can agree on is that if ever there was a day that hell would decide to come to earth, it has decided to come now. 

I’ll never forget that moment. It’s been weeks now, but I can still remember the exact minute that we had realized that this was the end. It was twelve twenty seven on August 19th, 2009. 

Bobby looked at us and said, “Might as well break out the good whiskey, boys. This is the beginning of the end.” 

Dean has never been good at accepting the inevitable. Neither have I, truth be told. I think that if we did, we wouldn’t have lived this long- we would’ve seen how pointless it all is. I don’t know about Dean, but the times when it hits me, how futile it is, how pointless hunting really is at its core, I stare at my gun and think about ending it. Dad always said I was the selfish one; that I wasn’t strong enough to make it in this world without him and Dean, and he was right. If it wasn’t for Dean, I would’ve shot myself years ago. I won’t lie and say that there weren’t days I was close. Hell, there are still days that I’m close.  
Staring at that television, part of me wished I had.  
  
Dean insists this isn’t the end. He wants to find a cure, but Bobby had a good point that day- Dean’s a high school dropout with a GED, I went to school to be a lawyer and walked out with nothing but a bunch of damn philosophy courses and a dead girlfriend, and he’s a mechanic. Talk about the wrong stuff.

Dean says we’re not gonna let the world end over a case of the demonic flu, but he’s wrong. It’s not the demonic flu.

It’s demonic Ebola.

I managed to tiptoe my way around the CDC’s “classified” database, and I got my hands on a report on the case. The CDC was holding a few infected to observe, to try and figure out the symptoms and onset of the virus. And if you’ve ever suddenly found yourself with desire to feel completely and utterly hopeless in this hellhole of a situation than you probably already do, then you should read what I’ve found.

According to the reports, it took 3 hours for the virus to activate, and then one more hour before patients started getting violent.  
Day 1, patients are aggressive to all human contact with the intent of murder. Physical Symptoms are profuse sweating, fully dilated pupils, and profuse bleeding from superficial wounds. Psychological symptoms are unmanageable aggression.  
Day 2, patients are even more so aggressive to all human contact with the intent of murder. Physical symptoms are the same, with the exception of hemorrhaging from the eyes, “tearing blood”. Psychological symptoms are the same, but include a marked inability to vocally communicate.  
Day 3, patients die of massive hemorrhaging. Autopsies show that brain matter is reduced by 70%, and that the hypothalamus and amygdala both swell and become hypersensitive to stimuli. Any contact with the blood without protective gear will infect, even if it’s just skin to blood contact.

At first, I thought the CDC had gotten something wrong. None of the Croats that I have seen teared blood, nor did they seem to just drop dead after three days. But then I realized- all the Croats I’ve dealt with have killed after the onset. Maybe the physical hemorrhaging is the virus’s response to the patient not killing. If the patient can’t kill, then the virus kills them and ensures that someone will get infected. Anyone who comes in contact with them will either be killed by the patient or infected. The virus has its own sort of intelligence, which isn’t surprising, since it is a demonic virus. But it doesn’t take a Ph.D. to realize how fucking terrifying that is.

The hunters all knew something was wrong when I let Lucifer out of the cage, and now, this is just the icing on this shit cake of a situation . God, if there were one thing I could go back in time and undo, it would be my birth. It seems so pointless to say that, but it’s true.

When I was little, I used to pray a lot. When Dean would leave the TV on all night, sometimes I’d wake up early and watch religious programs. They all said the same thing, basically. Heaven was where good people went, Hell was where bad people went, and angels watched over us all to make sure the devil didn’t hurt us. And every time something bad was going on, people on those shows would pray. Sometimes they’d fold their hands together, sometimes they put their hands on people in wheelchairs or people who were sick, and they prayed. And sometimes, the people in the wheelchairs would get up and walk and everyone would be screaming and crying, “Praise God! Praise Jesus!”  
And in my childish naivety, I believed that miracles were real. I believed they had no cost, only prayer and praises.

Then I met angels. I met angels and I realized that they weren’t the merciful centurions of humanity, watching over us and keeping us from harm. I learned that angels, if at all possible, were more flawed than humans. And these angels, for some reason, had chosen me and my brother for their plans to end the earth. I learned that it didn’t matter what we did- Dean would always be the good and righteous man, and I would always be the filthy abomination. He was always supposed to be Michael; the faithful, the strong, the good. And me? I was always supposed to be Lucifer; the selfish, the prideful, the evil.

If I could, I would go back to one night in particular, when I was 16. When I sat in another motel room like any other, staring blankly at the walls, alone while Dean hustled pool and slept with anything that looked at him nicely, trying to fill the void we both felt in a way I couldn’t. 

I was so jealous of him, his ability to find love in the eyes of strangers- he had that effect on people. Even people who hated him; somewhere, deep inside, only want him for their own. He was beautiful. He still is, if you catch him in the right moment. I can still see that beautiful 20 year old lurking in the crinkle of his eyes, in the corner of his smile. He hasn’t died yet.  
All I found in the eyes of strangers was suspicion and pity. I was too thin, too lanky, and a little too hungry around the eyes. They could tell that there was something dark inside me, something I knew was there but never understood until I was 23 and my life was burnt down for a third time by a man with yellow eyes.

I sat there in that motel room, polishing my gun, and a funny thought popped into my head.  
What if I just put this in my mouth, right now? What would it taste like? Gun oil? Would I taste the residue left behind from the last hunt we were on, when I fired it? I never seemed to be able to clean the guns right- never clean enough for Dad. Would I be able to taste my mistakes?  
Then I thought, what if I pulled the trigger? Would I feel it, that bullet ripping through my mouth, out the back of my skull? Or would it bounce around in there, scrambling my brains, leaving me an invalid that my brother would never leave but would resent more than he did now? 

I stared at the gun, imagining the possibilities. Would Dean cry and hold my dead body, asking for God to give him his brother back? Would my father rush back to see if it was true, that his youngest was dead? Would he mourn me the way he mourned my mother, with a dirty, creased photo in his wallet that he took out and sobbed quietly over in the dark when he was drunk and thought the world was asleep? Or would he curse me for taking his second most well trained soldier, for all the hunts he wouldn’t be able to take without me being there to play research monkey? 

Catholics believed that suicide was a sin. If I shot myself in the head, according to them, I’d never go to heaven. 

And I thought, thank God I’m not a Catholic. 

I thought about all the other religions I had studied over the years- for rituals, for short lived girlfriends and boyfriends, for my desperate need to believe in something more powerful than my father and evil.  They all said that in order to get to heaven, you had to be a good person.

Problem was, for the first time in my life, I was actually confronted with the question: did I really believe I was worthy of going to Heaven? Did I really think that I was a good person; that I was pure enough to go to Heaven? 

The answer was no. 

So I finished cleaning my gun, and went to sleep.

If I could, I’d go back to that day, and I wouldn’t go to sleep. I would put that gun in my mouth, and save the world with a single shell. Isn’t that funny? All I had to do to save the world was put a gun in my mouth at that moment. All I had to do to save the world was pull a trigger once.

I can’t now. They’ll just bring me back.

The life of a vessel of Lucifer is complicated. But then, being the preferred meat suit of an angel always is. Just ask poor Jimmy Novak.

I wonder about Jimmy sometimes. It’s hard not to, knowing that if the Angels have their way I’ll be just like him. I wonder if he’s still in there, trapped with Castiel. I wonder if he begs Castiel to let him just see his daughter and his wife, even from a distance. I guess that’ll be one benefit I’ll have that Jimmy doesn’t- I have no children, no wife. The only life I’ll be begging for is Dean’s, and it’s the only life that will never be spared.

You’d think by now I would know better than to beg for impossible things.  
I guess Dean is right. I still am a child.

The angels are hot on our heels. The demons are swarming. 75% of America turned into Croats. And the remaining 25% could turn at any time.

 


	2. Hope and Hatred in Dark Times

_Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God._ \- **Matthew 5:8**

* * *

Castiel came to us a few days ago, bearing bad news as usual.

Apparently, there’s dissention in heaven. I could’ve told him that- it started long before all this began-but I didn’t have the heart to say anything to him. He has that effect on people. He just looks so sad and serious that you feel bad even telling jokes around him.  
The Civil War has escalated to epic proportions. Everyone has taken a side, and there are more sides than we can count. According to Cas, thousands are dead, more are in the wind. But I saw something in his face that I’d never seen before. It looked like…hope.

Hope has never been an emotion I’ve been familiar with. I’ve felt it, god, I’ve made myself feel it when I knew there was no reason to, but I had rarely seen it on the faces of those around me, and especially not in the few years since Dean had died. I had never seen hope in Cas’s face. I’ve seen fury, indifference, irritation, amusement; but never hope. I almost laughed- leave it to Cas to only find hope in the end of days. I know it’s fucked up; but I’m finding more and more to laugh at since the world has ended than I ever did before.

He found an angel he’d believed was dead, apparently a former member of his garrison, Balthazar. I don’t mind him, he’s got a sense of humor and was more useful in the first five minutes we knew him than Cas has admittedly been the entire time we’ve known him. He explained that subservience had lost its flavor after a few millennia, and that he’d been ‘on the market’ in a fit of ‘churlish disobedience’, prior to ‘Cassie’ finding him; but that he figured nothing was more churlishly disobedient than siding with the humans. There was something about Balthazar’s honesty that drew me to him. Just as I’d never been around hope much in my life, I’d never been around honesty much either. 

Honesty, Hope. I value the things I can’t logically have and can’t much enjoy.

Dean and I agreed that we didn’t much care why he was on our side, only that he was and that he’d be useful.  
  


There was another angel Cas had managed to find, much to our elation- Anna.

Dean hugged her, and he was near tears, but it was clear that Anna wasn’t the same person she was, and it wasn’t just her grace returning. I knew that having her grace returned, going back to heaven, was the last thing she wanted. She ran from a corrupt, indifferent, and illogical system in search of a better and brighter future; and that was something I understood better than most people would give me credit for. The system that had raised her, that she had raised others in, was broken- but unlike my perfectly mortal father (though there were times he seemed like a walking God); hers could not be challenged with words and a college acceptance letter. She had to carve the grace out of her body, she had to turn her back forever on those she loved most, knowing that they would hunt her and would kill her. She had to throw herself over a wide and unpredictable abyss. All in the simple longing and hope for something better. But she had gone back, and then came back to us different.

Whatever they did to her, a light that I had once seen in her was gone.

I’ve never talked about it, but finding Anna, helping her remember her angelic past, had brought back the religion I had so desperately clung to as a child, and had lost as a man. It sounds weird when I think about it and even more so when I write about it, but Anna was pure, an innocent. I’ve always been drawn to people like her, people with a light that just radiated off of them. Dean was like that. You could stand next to him, even when he was smoking and greasy and smelled like gun oil and sweat and feel as if you had been touched by a cleansing light. Being near her, in a way I hadn’t felt since Dean came back from hell, was cleansing. Healing. I always wanted to be like that. I always wanted, hoped, that purity and goodness would somehow cleanse me.

All my life, I’ve protected people. It’s part of my existence- the hunter hunts and protects. But Anna…I wanted to protect her in a different way. I wanted to follow her to the ends of the earth to make sure no harm ever came to her. I wanted to follow her, to stand with her, to somehow envelope that grace and purity in a protective bubble. In a few days’ time, I felt more connected to her than I had to anyone.

The idea of Jesus always confused me. There was God, and he wrote the commandments for Moses, and the first damn one on the list is, “I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourselves an idol, nor any image of anything that is in the heavens above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: you shall not bow yourself down to them, nor serve them, for I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God.”

I find it easier to abstractly understand God than I can understand any other deity or part of religion. It sounds awful to say, but I have known a man like God, or at least the First Testament God. A jealous, controlling, vengeful father; a father that has no tolerance for disobedience, a father who lacked compassion and expected his hand chosen human servants to share in that lack of compassion.  My own father was like that- I understood it, I still do. I hated it, but I understood it. I suppose that’s why it was so easy to understand the concept of God. A giant scary man with a beard and a sword, who sent fingers of fire from the sky onto the heads of heretics. For most of my life, the Impala was heaven, my father was God, and any and all heretics were burnt with little regard for the details. So it was easy to imagine and understand God. Even the idea of the Holy Spirit was easy to understand. It was just God’s influence around you. But the idea of Jesus always baffled me.

Maybe it’s the fact that I can’t possibly imagine anyone having the ability to wash away the sins of the world. Maybe it’s because I can’t understand how anyone could see and hear someone so pure and still kill them. Maybe it’s because I find it perverse- the idea that God had a mortal son only to kill him for the sins of the beings he created. Jesus, the kind and loving, the righteous and strong, the man who said let the little children come unto me for there is the kingdom of heaven and the man who chased the greedy tax collectors from the temple with a leather whip; this being baffled me. Until I met Anna.  
I had found the answer to the great riddle of Jesus in her.

I saw in Anna Christ the gentle, the kind. I saw in her the shepherd, crook in hand, guiding the lost sheep with the light of her staff. I saw in her Christ the warrior, the strong. I saw in her the ageless and timeless soldier who would burn away the evil and unrighteous, who would fight to bring light to her father’s creation. Since I had met Anna, I stopped imagining a dark haired man with faint lines of age etched into his olive skin when I thought of Christ. All I imagine now is a beautiful woman with hair like fire and eyes that looked through you and saw what was lurking in the darkest corners of your heart.

She stood there stiffly as Dean hugged her, not returning the emotional response that Dean was having. It was odd, seeing Anna, who was always so expressive, suddenly so blank. The only thing that spoke in her expression was her eyes. There was so much pain in her eyes, and I could see the anger and rage in her that was directed at Cas.

I wanted to hug her too, to tell her everything that had happened and to tell her that her sacrifice wasn’t in vain. I wanted to tell her that she never gave up on us, so I wasn’t gonna give up on us either. I wanted to tell her that I didn’t believe we could do anything to stop the virus, but for her, I’d try. She’d lost so much. I didn’t want her to lose anymore. I wanted to tell her that I was sorry- on Dean’s behalf, on Cas’s behalf, hell, on my own behalf.

It was never lost on me that her betrayal was not so different from Jesus’ in the garden.  
Betrayed with a kiss by Judas, given up like a sacrificial lamb.  
For me, for my sins, because my brother didn’t want me to die.

I wanted to tell her that if it had been my choice, I would’ve willingly died for her freedom. Not out of some misguided sense of chivalry. I would’ve died for her freedom because I knew the way she felt. After she had disappeared, in a rare fit of honestly, Dean had told me what she had said, the confession she had made about being an angel. That she hated the blind obedience, the unwavering faith in an uncaring and absent father. It’s arrogant to say, but I knew that feeling all too well. And seeing the husk of the beautiful angelic light, the purity I had often dreamt about, the creature who had willingly allowed herself to be sold out for me, an abomination, I wanted to hug her and tell her I was so sorry. I wanted her to know that her act hadn’t gone unnoticed by me. I may be an abomination, a filthy, guilty soul, but even I knew purity when it was in front of me. I wanted to tell her that I knew that I wasn’t worthy of such a sacrifice, and that I would never forget the magnitude of her sacrifice.

When you look someone in the eye, you can see what they’re feeling. I was well familiarized with rage, with sadness, with pity in people’s eyes when they looked at me. But more than anything, I was familiar with hate. The eyes go blank, hard, with the barest glimmer of hellfire dancing behind them. Hate filled eyes never look at you, they look through you. 

I could see it in her eyes when she looked through me. She hated me.

 


	3. Sick of Death

_And the last enemy to be destroyed is death. _ **1 Corinthians 15:26**_  
_

The largest cities were the first to go. We listened on the radio as we drove cross country, gathering what people we could to help us- New York City was the first to go. Then Boston, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Chicago, Huston, Miami; all of them became warzones overnight. Cellphones are useless now- some people blame the government (what’s left of it) and some people blame militants. Who fucking knows? There’s no internet either. The only news there is comes from the radio, as if we’ve travelled back in time to world war two. And that news is about as reliable as the Weekly World News.

The borders were closed to Canada and Mexico short, fast, and in a hurry- they didn’t want our problems just as we never wanted theirs. The border is now closely guarded by their troops rather than ours. Who would’ve thought that we’d be closed in on all sides by everyone else when just a few weeks ago the big debate was whether or not we should send more troops to the Mexican border to stop illegal aliens from entering the country? Well, I guess drug and gang violence is preferable to a demonic virus that turned America into a horror movie.

People are saying Canada is fine, I don’t see how they could be- but who knows? Maybe free healthcare has enough perks to keep people from getting infected. Maybe there’s enough wildlife to kill the Croats before they get to the cities. Maybe Lucifer only managed to unleash his hell on America before everyone else got wise.

The President was killed, 90% of Capitol Hill was wiped out in one shot when apparently a representative from Rhode Island was infected and turned right in the middle of them. Martial law was declared pretty quickly. Makes me think of this song that I heard about a thousand years ago in a college classroom while we were all taking a midterm- I had a professor that hated silence, so he’d play this old-timey comedy singer, Tom something or other. Anyways, the chorus started with ‘What do we do? Send the marines!’   
Have I ever mentioned how much I fucking hate marines?

Most people think that it’s just a stereotype that every marine is the same, but at their core, they are. They all have the same voice, same bark in their tone, the same smell, and the same facial expressions. We drive through checkpoints sometimes, and every time I look out the window, all I see is a thousand carbon copies of my father around me, scrutinizing, making us both squirm in our seats. I half expect to hear one of them yell, ‘What’s your problem, boy? Look me in the eye when you talk to me! Be a man!’  
Thank god, none of them ever do. But then again…I’m pretty sure my father and Bobby are the only humans in existence who would look at me and see a boy. I don’t even see a boy in the mirror anymore- well, sometimes I do. Sometimes I see 8 year old me staring back at me. He stares me in the eye and he asks me, ‘What happened to you?’  
I never have the heart to tell him the truth. I don’t even have the heart to tell my reflection the truth. What does that say about me?

Sometimes, I look in the rearview mirror and see my brother’s 12 year old reflection staring at him, his eyes wide and his lip caught in his teeth.   
‘What happened to him?’   
I don’t have the heart to tell him the truth either. I never knew it when we were children, how haunted my 12 year old brother’s eyes were. I didn’t realize that I shouldn’t have seen an adult look back at me when I looked at him. And now, when I see him, my 12 year old brother, I want to hug him and tell him to stop asking what happened.   
Keep your innocence, big brother, whatever is left of it. You’ve grown up enough. There’s already an old man behind those bright eyes. You don’t want any more to carry.

There are luxuries that you never think about until they’re gone. Internet is definitely one, but I grew up without the internet. I know how to get by without it. Sometimes, it’s the ability to drive thru some burger joint and grab some food in 5 minutes, god, I miss that. I’m not partial to fast food, honestly, but the convenience was nice. It’s always nice to fill that gnawing in your belly the minute you feel it.   
I always told myself that I’d never let my brother feel hungry again, not like when we were kids-but hunger is something you get used to pretty fast, and Dean always adapts quicker than the rest of us. I’m never hungry. Sometimes, I like that clawing pain inside me. It helps me feel clean, like the pain is payment for all the dirty things I’ve done. But Dean won’t let me go without eating for long; he sees it too fast for it to do any good. Food, food on demand is a luxury that you never think about.  But weirdly enough, what I miss most now is television. After I graduated high school, I stopped really watching the television, but it was always on. I can’t focus without noise; I can’t sleep without noise- I guess that’s the effects of communal living with the loudest and rowdiest men in existence. It used to drive Jessica nuts.

I miss her.

90% of the time, I have to stay in the car, or in some motel room, while Dean is gathering people up. Guess the news spread pretty quick that I let Lucifer out of the cage. And Lucifer’s shit? Well, it rolls downhill. And I’m at the bottom.   
  
Nothing makes the Apocalypse more fun than having every single person you’ve ever known and twice as many you don’t looking at your brother and calling you a ‘thing’. That seems to be their favorite term for me- ‘thing’. Don’t bring that thing near my family. I don’t wanna be near that thing. That thing caused all of this. Gordon Walker shoulda killed that thing.

 We went to go see if a hunter we knew, Mona Jenkins, was okay. Well, she wasn’t. She and all 20 of her hounds were dead. I asked Dean what was going on when he got in the car, and all he said was, “Sam, do me a favor and don’t fucking talk to me right now.”   
We both knew what that meant. It meant ‘if there weren’t bloodthirsty Croats running around right now, I’d leave your ass on the side of the road’. It meant ‘you fucking freak son of a bitch, why did I ever fucking ask for your help to find Dad’. It meant ‘So this is what I killed Gordon for’, ‘So this is what I went to hell for’, ‘So this is what Mom died for’.

I am so sick of death. You’d think, growing up the way I did, that I’d be numb to it by now, that I’d just be able to accept that people all around us are dying. But I can’t.

I killed my first monster when I was ten. I know a lot of people are probably gasping in horror for little ten year old me- well, don’t. My brother shot his first monster when he was seven, and he watched my Dad shoot a skin walker flat in the head when he was barely six. Things die, and in order for things to die, something has gotta make them that way.

That’s the thing about death- I hate it, I hate everything about it- but it’s necessary. When people used to live on farms, used to have to depend on themselves for everything, death was a ritual. Mothers wrung chicken necks and chopped off their heads; fathers wrestled hogs and killed them for meat. Grandparents died at home in their sleep, children with fevers died in their beds. Death wasn’t hidden, wasn’t disguised, wasn’t a mystery- everyone knew death well, but they didn’t fear death.

Have you ever killed a pig before?

Thing about pigs is you wanna kill ‘em quick. Pigs squeal when you come for them with a certain gait- killing gait is what my father called it- and they can sense it. You gotta wrestle them down, slide that knife under their throat, and cut. Cut quick, cut efficient. We had to get right on top of it and cut the throat ourselves. We never had pigs of our own; because we never had a house of our own, but I can remember a few times that we did it at Pastor Jim’s home in Michigan. Pastor Jim raised pigs, liked to be self-sufficient.   
Pastor Jim and my father usually argued about the merits of shooting a pig- Pastor Jim said it was more humane, Dad said it spoiled the meat and was an easy way out. Dad always had this thing about the easy way- he figured if it was easy, then it wasn’t the right thing.

I was 7 the first time I saw my dad kill one of those pigs. I figure I had it easier than Dean- my introduction to death didn’t have a human face, and for that I’m thankful. I watched him tiptoe closer to that pig, and suddenly, quicker than I could think, he had him wrestled to the ground, his throat slit and his hands bloody.   
I was horrified, curious, and I wanted to get closer. I hopped down off the fence and got a bit closer, only to have Dean grab me by the back of my shirt and push me back over the fence.   
“Get in the house Sammy, you don’t wanna see this, ok?”

He was right. I didn’t wanna see it.

A few years later, my dad slaughtered another pig, but he got it wrong. The pig came running at me, blood pouring from its neck, splattering my duct-taped hiking boots. Its eyes looked so desperate as it fell in front of me, and I screamed and ran. I ran until I found Dean and I buried my face in his chest and I didn’t eat pork for nearly 10 years. I still can barely stomach it.

But it was a ritual, this killing, this death. That pig’s throat was cut to feed us, it was done humanely, and it was done out of necessity. That lesson carried over into my hunting- I killed humanely, I didn’t want to draw it out. A monster’s death is a necessity. I don’t kill them out of hate. I kill them because they need to die to protect humans who cannot defend themselves. I kill them because I have to.

But I’m still sick of death. I’m sick to death of death.


	4. Broken, Flawed, But Not Worthless

_Woe to the worthless shepherd who leaves the flock!_ \- **Zechariah 11:17**

* * *

 

We’ve made a makeshift camp out of Bobby’s house, much to his irritation. He can barely wheel around the house without bumping into someone. People are trying to get together ideas for camps, trying to decide who goes where and does what- but every time I walk in the room, everyone goes silent, except for Bobby. It seems like he doesn’t even notice they won’t talk to me- he just assigns me jobs and ignores them.

I know they’re looking at me and trying to figure out how the hell me and Dean came from the same parents. I can see it in their eyes, same look in my Dad’s eyes. Are you mine? Are you actually John Winchester’s son?

People see my dad as some sort of legend, a war hero. I used to too. I used to think that he was larger than life, a living god. No one could outwit my father. No one could beat his strength. No one was more deadly than he was. But the truth is, he was a sad, angry man. I don’t think anyone knew my father as a man. Sure, the hunted with him, they asked for his help, but I know my father better than people think- he was all business. He’d sell any one of these damn hunters who worship the ground he walks on to a demon for any hint of what killed my mother. He would’ve sold me, if he had a chance to. I know that, I’m not an idiot.

People think I don’t know how Dean came back from that accident, because they don’t know, and Dean doesn’t know. I never told Dean, god, I fucking can’t, but you think for a minute that thing was inside me and I didn’t find out as much as I could from her? My father knew the yellow eyed demon’s-Azazel’s- name…months, a year before we did. You can’t summon demons unless you know their names. He asked me to get him a summoning spell. I know that now, I’ve used them enough times. He summoned that thing and traded the Colt and his life for Dean’s, and for that, I will forgive every single wrong, every single thing he ever did to us. Knowing that is the only reason I can ever look back on him with any sort of forgiveness in my heart.

But I’m not foolish enough to believe that if I was in the same position, if it was me hooked up to all those machines, that he would’ve done the same. I know what he said to Dean- kill me, or save me. Saving me is a lot harder than killing me, and killing me would’ve been a permanent solution, a definite. And I know my father- he liked definites.

I wish I had the strength inside me to tell the truth, to tell all these people in these rooms everything. I want them to get it- I know they think I’m a thing, and maybe they’re right, but all I wanted to do was save their stupid asses. I wanted to make everyone safe, don’t they realize that?

They don’t. Maybe that’s why I can’t help but pity Cas most of the time. I know what he feels, what he goes through, that desire to save others and help them. Even if it means doing the wrong thing for the right reason. I can understand that. Sometimes I wonder just what makes Castiel the way he is, the same way I wonder what makes me the way I am. Maybe God cut us from the same cloth.

I try to avoid the house as much as possible. Dean doesn’t like that I’ve taken to sleeping in the Impala, but I feel safer there. It seems like a foolish thing, but most of the time I feel as if someone is just waiting for the opportunity to kill me in there. Out here, in the Impala, I’m safe. This is Dean’s temple and everyone knows it- no one would even consider touching me out here. Not out of respect or fear of me, but out of respect and fear of my brother. Even as an adult, Dean is my protector.

Dean has told me that he doesn’t blame me, that this was all a million years in the making, but I can tell he’s lying to me. He doesn’t want me to leave for one reason and one reason only- he doesn’t want me saying yes to Lucifer. And as much as it hurts that that’s the only reason he keeps me here, it’s a comfort in its own way. He needs to make sure I don’t finish destroying the world with my stupidity, so he keeps me close. I know he’ll admit it sooner or later, when he has a bit too much to drink and has a bit too little sleep. Combined, it’s like truth serum for him.

I walked in the main room one day and Anna was behind me suddenly, grabbing my arm and pulling me away. I wanted to throw my arms up and beg forgiveness, beg her to kill me and kill me properly, to destroy my body in a way that could never be fixed. But I didn’t. I just quietly let her drag me out of the house and into the Impala.

She looked as if she had just stepped into a dream, her mouth opened slightly and her eyes misty. She ran her hands over the leather of the seats, breathing deeply.   
She whispered, “It hasn’t changed at all,” as soft as a prayer, and I didn’t know what to say. Of course I knew that she and Dean had sex in here the night before we gave her up, but I suppose I thought she’d regard it with disgust, rather than reverence. But that’s all I could read on her face- reverence, a sort of quiet praise for this tiny space, like it held much more than could ever be described.

Of course, for me and Dean, the Impala does hold more than could ever be described. It was our home since before I can accurately recall- it still is. The Impala was one of the few consistent things in my life as a child, and that’s why it holds a precious place in my heart. That’s why I kept it when Dean died- because it was my home, and it was his home, and sometimes, when I sat in it alone in the dead of night with his shitty radio-recorded tapes, I swore I could hear him talking to me through those speakers.

But it surprised me that this temple held meaning to more than just us, the wandering, lost hunter boys. It held meaning for an ancient and powerful being, and angel. And not just any angel- the angel that gave me back my religion.

I thought it was fitting, this Christ figure sitting in the only church that I knew. If she held my father’s journal in her hands it would complete the picture- Christ, the temple, and the holiest scripture of my existence, three of the only four things that I could truly believe in.

She asked me if I knew what had happened in the Impala, and I said I didn’t know. I didn’t want to say, _“Oh, you had sex with my brother during your last night on Earth before he betrayed you and handed you off to your siblings who probably tortured you.”_ I also didn’t want to say, _“Oh, you made love with my brother in here,”_ because it felt vulgar and cheap and it tasted like a lie. I don’t doubt that there was love in both of them when they had sex, and there was nothing wrong with them having sex. It just felt like a lie to call it love making, and a patronizing lie at that.

She didn’t let me respond before she told me in no minced words that she and Dean had sex, and that it was her last human act of free will. She said it as if it were a holy confession, as if she would give anything to go back to those stolen and sweaty moments in the back of the Impala where we were sitting, her hand pressed against the window.

But suddenly she looked at me and asked me something that still, hours later, has my head spinning. She asked me why. I didn’t know what to say, other than to start apologizing for everything. I thought she was asking why we had betrayed her, why I’d let Lucifer out of the cage, the list goes on forever. But as I stumbled over my words, trying to make wrongs right, she just pressed her finger to my lips and shook her head and asked me why I keep trying to please the other hunters. She said, “Once you leave the flock, you can never come back. Why are you trying?”

I want someone to understand. Why do I keep trying? Because I didn’t know. How was I supposed to know that killing Lillith would cause…all of this? For two years we were trying to take her down. How the hell was I supposed to know that she was the last seal? I didn’t know this would happen. I just want people to believe me- I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I was doing something good.

She knows what it’s like to leave the flock, and she would know better than anyone that it’s impossible to return, that it’s pointless. But I’ve always done pointless things, hoping that something would come out of it. Hell, my entire existence is pointless… there’s really no point in fighting this vessel thing. Both Lucifer and the other angels have made it clear that this prophesy has existed since the beginning of time. What’s the point in fighting, if not just to comfort ourselves? 

Still, I’m gonna fight.

I told her all of that and she smiled at me and hugged me gently. She held my face in her hands and looked at me as if she could see something I could never see in the mirror- she looked at me as if she could see strength. She kissed my forehead and said to me, “Woe to the worthless shepherd that leaves the flock.”

I didn’t understand what she meant at first, but now I think I do. My brother and I, whether we want it or not, are the shepherds of this flock of hunters. We have to lead them, even if we are fighting against unconquerable odds. She could see my desire to die, and told me in her own way- I can’t give up. If not for my own sake, then for the hunters inside the house who hated me. They may hate me, but they need me.

I suppose I can take their hatred, if it means that they’ll survive. My life, or theirs? I was raised on that lesson.

It’s always their lives.

I am not the worthless shepherd. Broken, flawed, but not worthless.


End file.
